How to redirect if not root route to subdirectory index file with .htaccess

user_15579573 0
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I have two web pages. I want to deploy these two pages on one domain. When I call the root URL, I want to load the index.html in root directory, and for other URLs, I want to load the index1.html in the /app directory.

This is the directory structure.

www.example.com/index.html
www.example.com/app/index1.html

For example: when request www.example.com loading index.html

For www.example.com/login loading /app/index1.html

For www.example.com/signup loading /app/index1.html

This is what I have tried.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /
  RewriteRule ^index\.html$ - [L]
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /app/index1.html [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

This make redirection when I request www.example.com/signup to www.example.com/app/index1.html.

But I want to load app/index1.html without redirection. Please help me.

server url-rewriting .htaccess redirect mod-rewrite
2 Answers

With your shown samples, please try following .htaccess rules. Please make sure of following things before you test your URLs:

  • Make sure your .htaccess file, index.html and your app folder are residing in same root folder.
  • Make sure you have index1.html file present inside /app folder.
  • Make sure to clear your browser cache before testing your URLs.

RewriteEngine ON
##Rule from OP's attempt to block direct access of index.html file.
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ - [NC,L]

##Rule to handle only url www.example.com here.
RewriteRule ^/?$  /index.html [QSA,NC,L]

##Rules to handle rest of the cases here..
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^  /app/index1.html [QSA,NC,L]
user_58665800 
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /
  RewriteRule ^index\.html$ - [L]
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /app/index1.html [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

You basically just needed to remove the R (redirect) flag on the last RewriteRule directive. But this can be optimised:

DirectoryIndex index.html

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^app/index1\.html$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule . app/index1.html [L]

mod_dir (ie. DirectoryIndex) serves /index.html from the root. This may already be configured in the server config, so the DirectoryIndex directive may not be required here.

  • The first RewriteRule directive is an optimisation to prevent unnecessary filesystem checks. This should match the file being rewritten to. ie. /app/index1.html (not /index.html).

  • The last RewriteRule matches against a single character (ie. . - dot) so excludes requests for the root directory so prevents unnecessary filesystem checks everytime the root is requested. The regex ^(.*)$ on the other hand matches everything, including the root (which fails the directory check - 2nd condition / RewriteCond directive).

  • Unless you are using symlinks then you can remove the 3rd condition.

  • Depending on the format of your URLs then you could make the regex more restrictive and perhaps remove the first condition that checks that the request does not map to a file (filesystem checks are relatively expensive). eg. Do your URLs contain dots? The two examples you gave do not. Dots naturally delimit file extensions, so if your URLs do not contain dots then they will naturally not map to any existing files.

user_3694340
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